Some embodiments described herein relate generally to methods and apparatus for configuring directional or beam-steering antenna systems.
Known antenna systems typically operate in an omni-directional mode where each known antenna system receives and/or transmits signals in all directions. Known antenna systems operating in an omni-directional mode typically have weak performances because the transmission and/or reception capability of the antenna systems are spread over all directions, where many of the directions are not associated with any user communication devices in communication with the antenna systems. Hence, a significant portion of the transmission and/or reception capability of omni-directional antenna systems is lost or unused. The lost capability of omni-directional antenna systems can lead to significant reduction in the quality of the transmitted and/or received signals and also a reduction in the maximum range of user communication devices that communicate with the antenna systems.
Known methods of implementing directional or beam-steering antenna systems can increase the strength of transmit signals to a user communication device via the selective directional transmission of signals to the specific user communication device. Such known methods, however, cannot increase the strength of reception signals from user communication devices because reception signals are non-deterministic, i.e., the antenna systems cannot predict when a user communication device will send a signal and thus the antenna systems cannot direct their reception towards a user communication device before the user communication device sends a signal. Hence, such known methods configure the antenna systems in a directional mode when transmitting signals and then configure the antenna systems to an omni-directional mode when receiving signals. This limits the quality of the reception signals of the antenna systems and the effective range for communication to a user communication device as the beam-steering feature is disabled during reception of signals.
Accordingly, a need exists for methods and apparatus for configuring antenna systems to operate in a directional or beam-steering mode for both transmission and reception of signals to a user communication device(s).